Recipe Book by Guadalupe Rozas

The notebook belonging to Guadalupe Rozas was the first that Los Recetarios received. This project was created as a digital store to honor and give a voice to those people who, from their kitchen tables, unknowingly helped to build and spread their regional culinary culture.

Guadalupe Rozas wrote her recipe book in the late 19th century, in Aranda de Duero (Burgos province). She came from a well-to-do family in Valles Pasiegos, and this recipe book is one of the few memories her descendants have of her. She died in 1903 aged just 28, leaving behind a young daughter.

It is a beautiful recipe book, written in impeccable handwriting and containing 173 recipes, some her own and others taken from elsewhere. It was preserved and shared by her great-grandson, Ignacio Medina, a transatlantic food journalist living in Peru.

At a time when book distribution was complicated and there was no such thing as a photocopier, Guadalupe transcribed recipes that she liked—just like we would today—from The New Art of Cooking: The Most Complete Collection Ever Published (Nuevo Arte de Cocina: El Más Completo que Ha Visto la Luz Pública) (Barcelona, 1864). That is why her collection includes Catalan sausages (butifarra), but not blood sausage (morcilla) from Burgos.

 It also immortalizes her own recipes, including: migas de leche (breadcrumbs in milk); sopa de hierbas (herb soup); artichokes in ajillo pastoril (garlic sauce); bizcochada de almendra (almond sponge cake); tocino del cielo (an egg-yolk flan); mantecados (shortbread cookies); sequillos (cookies drizzled in meringue); mostachones (macaroons); roscos de vino (ring-shaped cookies made with wine); bollos de yema (sweet buns); and Santa Ysabel cake.